NightBorn

      

By Theresa Cheung

NightBorn By Theresa Cheung Out October 1st from 6th Books   What if the line between your waking life and your darkest dreams disappeared forever?   For as long as I can remember, dreams have been my passion, my profession, and my calling. As a Sunday Times bestselling author of spiritual and dream related non-fiction, and a frequent media guest, whether it’s taking dream call- ins on ITV’s This Morning or being interviewed by Nicky Campbell for the BBC Sounds podcast Different, I’ve spent my career helping people decode the secret language of their dreams. My mission has always been clear: to bring dream work into the mainstream and show the world its incredible potential to heal, empower, and transform. But as much as I love non-fiction, there came a moment when I realised that the best way to truly make dream decoding accessible, even irresistible, to a wider audience wasn’t perhaps through fact but through fiction. Through the power of storytelling. Obvious really as every night our dreams talk to us in the language of stories and symbols. That realisation led me to write Nightborn, my debut novel. It’s a psychological thriller that dares to ask: what if powerful people found a way to hack our dreams and implant ideas? What if your sleeping mind wasn’t your own? And what if one morning you woke up and discovered that strangers had seen you in their dreams and recognised your face? These aren’t just dystopian and what-ifs; to me. They’re reflections of real concerns and real potential when it comes to the mystery of the dream world and the untapped power of the subconscious. Writing Nightborn was a leap of faith. I’ve spent decades translating the mystical into the practical, helping people understand the symbolic language of dreams and how they relate to waking life. My books have found a devoted readership, and I’ve been deeply humbled to be listed among the 100 world’s most spiritually influential people. But I’ve always known that dreams remain on the fringes of mainstream education and discussion. They’re often dismissed as nonsense, even though we all have them, and despite their profound historical, psychological, and cultural significance. That’s why I believe fiction, especially psychological suspense, offers an ideal medium to not just entertain but also smuggle in these powerful ideas.   Stories, after all, bypass resistance. They work on us much like dreams do: emotionally, symbolically, and often without our conscious awareness. In writing Nightborn, I wanted to create a page-turner that would ignite the imagination while subtly introducing readers to the deeper principles of dream work. My hope is that readers who never thought twice about their dreams might close the book and begin keeping a dream journal or at least start wondering what their subconscious is trying to say to them every single night. Ultimately, my long-term mission is to see dream decoding taught in schools as part of emotional and psychological holistic wellbeing education. It’s not just about interpreting symbols its about teaching people to listen to themselves, to understand their inner worlds, and to heal and discover their innate creativity from the inside out. Enter the World of Nightborn Set in a not-so-distant future, Nightborn follows Professor Alice Sinclair, a brilliant but haunted psychologist unhealthily obsessed with the works of Carl Jung, particularly his enigmatic Red Book. Jung’s ideas, though he never appears directly, cast a long shadow over the entire novel. In fact, Nightborn is structured around the four pillars of Jungian integration: Persona, Anima/Animus, Shadow, and Self. Each part of the novel represents a phase in Alice’s own psychological journey as she investigates a strange phenomenon: a wave of identical dreams sweeping across the globe in which ordinary people report seeing the same mysterious face - her face. But Alice isn’t famous. She isn’t an influencer or a celebrity. So how can so many strangers be dreaming about her? And what is the purpose of these shared dreams? As she digs deeper, Alice uncovers a chilling secret: a secret research initiative that has found a way to access, influence, and weaponise the collective unconscious, but why did they choose her as their guinea pig? In a world increasingly dominated by surveillance and psychological profiling, dreams have become the final frontier of privacy, and the last true source of freedom. Until now. The speculative premise of Nightborn, the idea that dreams could be hacked, may sound like science fiction, but it’s closer to reality than many realise. We already live in a time where algorithms can predict our desires, where marketing firms track our unconscious impulses, and where targeted ads appear moments after we merely think about a product. It isn’t hard to imagine a future where even our dreams become a battleground. Dreams have always been a place of refuge and inner truth. But what if they could be monitored, analysed, and even manipulated? Nightborn explores this terrifying possibility, not just as a plot device, but as a metaphor for how vulnerable and highly suggestable our inner worlds have become in the age of big data and AI. The themes of control, identity, and psychological integrity are woven throughout the novel. Alice’s quest to understand why she is appearing in people’s dreams mirrors a deeper, more universal quest: the struggle to reclaim one’s authentic self in a world that’s constantly trying to shape us from the outside in. One of the most rewarding aspects of writing Nightborn was embedding Jungian archetypes and dream symbolism directly into the narrative structure. Alice’s journey through Persona, Anima/Animus, Shadow, and Self is not only an intellectual homage to Jung, it is also an emotional and spiritual roadmap for readers. Jung believed that healing comes from integration: bringing the hidden, denied, or unconscious parts of ourselves into the light. This process isn’t easy. It’s often traumatic and painful. But it’s the only way to achieve true wholeness. Through Alice, readers confront their own personas, the masks we wear, and encounter the opposites within - the parts of us we suppress, the shadows we avoid, and the self we strive to become. In a world where mental health challenges are on the rise, and where many feel disconnected from meaning and purpose, I believe Jung’s ideas are more relevant than ever. That’s why he is, in many ways, the invisible character guiding Nightborn from behind the scenes. When Everyone Dreams of You?  A motif in the novel that often leaves readers unsettled is the mass dreaming phenomenon, strangers all dreaming of Alice. It’s reminiscent of the internet legend This Man; (referenced through the novel’s subtle nods to the thisman.org campaign), where thousands of people around the world claimed to see the same unknown man in their dreams. What if that shared dreaming could be orchestrated? What if someone, or something, could plant ideas, suggestions, even fears, while we slept? This idea taps into ancient myths and modern fears alike. It raises questions about free will, destiny, and consciousness. It challenges the assumption that our dreams belong solely to us. And it opens the door to powerful conversations about collective trauma, psychic connection, and the sacredness of our inner worlds. Writing Nightborn wasn’t just an artistic experiment. It was a calling. I wanted to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual, the conscious and the unconscious, the seen and the unseen. Fiction gave me the freedom to explore dark, provocative, and urgent themes while staying true to my lifelong mission: to make the power of dreams visible, viable, and vibrant in the everyday lives of readers. Because in the end, dreams aren’t just stories we tell ourselves at night. They’re mirrors. They’re messages. And they’re maps to the deepest, most authentic parts of who we are. With Nightborn, I invite readers not only to follow Alice into the darkness to find out who they really are and what their values are but to emerge, like her, more integrated, more aware, and more awake than ever before…   NightBorn By Theresa Cheung  is out October 1st from 6th Books or from wherever books are sold. Book Link:    https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/6th-books/our-books/nightborn-novel